Erika Mann’s Pepper Mill. A Satirical Revue
Special Request Engagement. New School, Auditorium. 66 West, 12th Street
Friday, Jan. 22. Saturday, Jan 23.
Sunday, Jan 24 at 8:45 P.M.
Tickets Sale: New School of Social Research
Columbia University, Book Store
N.Y.U. Book Store
Workers Book Store
A NOTE ON “PEPPER MILL”
Though The “Pepper Mill” is here billed as an intimate revue, it is closely allied to the tradition of “cabaret art”. “Ueberbrettl” and “Literarische Revuebühne”, which have had a long tradition in the German theatre. ”Cabaret” there has a somewhat different connotation than it has in America. That of informal entertainment, staged sometimes in a cabaret, sometimes in a theatre, but always unpretentiously and in the intimate surroundings, and not afraid to deal occasionally with serious topics.
The first performance of the “Pepper Mill” was given on New Year’s Eve of 1933 in Munich, at the “Bonbonniere”, where Frank Wedekind, the noted playwright, and a brilliant coterie, had once staged their famous “Eleven Hangmen” entertainments. It achieved immediate success. After playing for two months to crowded houses, “we left Germany rather suddenly”, as Erika Mann once said in an interview. Its travels began with Switzerland, where it achieved the same success as in Munich, playing three or even four return engagements in Basle, Bern, Luzerne, and other cities. “A veritable psychosis of enthusiasm preceded it”, as a writer for the Berne Tagwacht said. From Switzerland it went to Prague, Brussels, Salzburg ( for a special performance for Max Reinhart and his guests) and to other cities and countries, giving in all 1,064 performances before coming to this country, where it is for the first time staged in English. Its title was given it by Thomas Mann, the great German writer recently deprived of his citizenship, father of Erika Mann.
ERIKA MANN at eighteen was a pupil of Max Reinhardt‘s and appeared in a number of his productions in Berlin. By the time she was twenty, she was well-known for the performance in the leading role of “Anja und Esther”, a play by her brother, Klaus Mann, and other successful productions. She continued to act, with intervals out for a trio around the world, until the theatrical crisis in Germany made her think of beginning a new venture in the theatre. That was the “Pepper Mill”, which she originally conceived and staged.
THERESE GIEHSE was for a decade the leading character actress of the Munich Kammerspiele, one of the most noted theatres in Germany, and also she played the immortal Mrs. Peachum in many productions of the “Three Penny Opera” in Berlin and other cities, in Bruno Frank’s “ Storm in A Teacup”, now a London success, an other plays. She has been with the “Pepper Mill” from its beginning, returning during the vacations to the legitimate stage as a guest player in several countries.
LOTTE GOSLAR made her first appearance at 17 at the Scala, Berlin’s largest music hall and scored an immediate success. She has also danced at the Berlin Winter Garden and the Cabaret der Komiker there, and at Voskover and Werich’s famous theatre in Prague. She has given solo dance recitals throughout Europe.
MAGNUS HENNING is a young Swiss who refuses to take himself as seriously as music critics sometimes have done, and who has written many songs. Occasionally, as in the “Pepper Mill”, he plays them.
JOHN LATOUCHE here makes his first appearance on the stage, though he has been connected with it in such activities as writing lyrics for “Murder in The Old Red Barn”, for Spivy and other nightclub entertainers, and, of all things, as research director for the Russian Ballet. He earned his way through Columbia winning poetry prizes and will shortly have a book of verse in print.
SYBILLE SCHLOSS was the ingenue lead of the Munich Kammerspiele before joining the “Pepper Mill”.
JOHN BECK comes here from Chicago where he appeared in supper club entertainments.
WALLACE ROONEY is a Yale Drama Workshop graduate, and has played in many summer and winter stock companies. He is known in New York for his radio appearances.

SPONSORS of the “Peppermill”
Hamilton First Armstrong Theresia Helburn Emil Ludwig
Mrs. George Baker Fannie Hurst Prince Hubertus Lowenstein
Vicki Baum Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Knopf Max Reinhardt
Mrs. William B. Chatbourne Mrs. Henry Goddard Leach Maurice Wertheim
Paul D. Cravath Mrs. Margaret Lewisohn